Visual Conversations with Data

Tony HirstDept of Communication and Systems,

The Open University

TXR175/TXR120

Figure 1 Sensor Traces

is a chart that’s designed to be read

IT TELLS A STORY

IT TELLS THE ROBOT’S STORY

http://www.musik-therapie.at/PederHill/Structure&Plot.htm

Data conversations

Conversations around what’s not there…

Presentation Graphicsvs.

Visual Analysis

Explanatory visualizationData visualizations that are used to transmit information or a point of view from the designer to the reader. Explanatory visualizations typically have a specific “story” or information that they are intended to transmit.

Exploratory visualizationData visualizations that are used by the designer for self-informative purposes to discover patterns, trends, or sub-problems in a dataset. Exploratory visualizations typically don’t have an already-known story.

Visual Analysisor

Presentation Graphics?

Writing Diagrams

GraphViz

Algorithmic Visualisation

ggplot2 (R)

d3.js (Javascript)

ggplot2

ggplot() + geom_linerange(data = d1,aes(x= car, ymin = ymin,ymax = ymax)) + geom_point(data = d2,aes(x= car, y= value,shape = variable),size = 2) + opts(title="F1 2011 Korea \nRace Summary Chart", axis.text.x=theme_text(angle=-90, hjust=0)) + labs(x = NULL, y = "Position", shape = "")

Bertin’s Visu

al Variables

http://eagereyes.org/blog/2011/you-only-see-colors-you-can-name

Exploiting Structure

Structure in data - h

ierarchies

Hierarchical data and treemaps - medals

Pivot tables

IBM Many Eyes

Macroscopes

aka “seasonal subseries”

Gource

Show me the difference…

Let me see the difference…

Can I see the difference..?

Where exactly..?

Emergent views of structural properties

[ Freemind ]

gephi.org

No truth, many truths

#bbcqt & #newsnight

#bbcqt & #newsnight

#bbcqt & #newsnight

Have you had a visual conversation with any of YOUR data lately?

blog.ouseful.info

@psychemedia